We drove down to the nearest IKEA store in Vantaa to see the cabinet I mentioned in a recent post. It's probably not a co-incidence that the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, was from the region of Småland in Sweden. That region is heavily forested. Most of it is not the best agricultural land. The whole interior of the southern part of Sweden to the south of Stockholm is heavily forested and very unlike the kind of vast open fields and grazing land like Denmark or the southwestern coastal provinces that Sweden conquered from Denmark in the Second Northern War and that were incorporated into the kingdom of Sweden in 1658. Småland has a large number of small family farms. As you might already guess, the traditional mentality of the people has informed the extreme pragmatism and relentless cost cutting that make up what IKEA is all about. The cabinet we will probably buy was robust but modular and not very expensive. I think IKEA pioneered the flat pack in 1943 when the company was founded. Since then, it has grown quite a bit. Ingvar Kamprad was worth $78 billion when he passed away a couple of years ago. If you want to see what Småland looks like, check out @dandesign86's posts. He lives in the southern part of that region.
When we were driving back home on the motorway, I suggested that we take a detour along the eastern shore of Lake Tuusulanjärvi. Many prominent artists of the national romantic era lived there in the early 20th century. We stopped by at the home museum of Pekka Halonen, a painter of that era.
This is Pekka Halonen's home. It's a museum but it was closed at the time.
This is the sauna.
The museum cafeteria where you buy the tickets.
This is Lake Tuusulanjärvi. The town in the north end of the lake is Järvenpää. The name means literally lake's end.
The next three were shot towards the south. The lake gets narrower in the south. It's about 10 km long.
Below is some info about the museum and the area:
On the way home. Notice how the northbound lanes are almost empty but the southbound ones have lots of traffic. Lot's of people are returning home from spending the long Midsummer weekend in the countryside. This is national road 4, one of six connecting Helsinki Metropolital Area to other regions. The traffic had slowed down to what looked like 30-40 km/h a short distance to the north of here.